abortion and bodily autonomy

As contentious as the issue of abortion may have grown to be, the pro-choice rationale — or at least my rationale for being pro-choice — is simple.

Abortion is defined as the deliberate surgical termination of a pregnancy. It's a procedure a woman may resort to should she decide to end her pregnancy, a measure she may take for a multitude of reasons: the birth may pose an imminent threat to her health, or she simply may not have the means to raise a child. And as politicized as bodily autonomy has become, the debate boils down to a woman's right to decide whether or not to shoulder the responsibility of birthing and raising another being. The morality of abortion has been contested; it's been called murder, and some have gone as far as calling the hundreds of thousands of babies aborted each year victims of some sort of genocide. This level of insularity toward the struggles of women facing unplanned pregnancies has translated into legislation, with some states passing sweeping bills so stringent they effectively ban abortion. Mississippi recently passed a bill banning abortion past 15 weeks of gestation, with exceptions allowed only in cases of medical emergency and severe fetal abnormality — under this law, even rape and incest are not sufficient reasons to terminate a pregnancy via abortion. NPR calls it "one of the most restrictive abortion bills" in the nation, and it is.

My support for abortion is premised on the idea that if a baby has the right to non-consensual access to a woman's body, she should have the right to an abortion. As British pro-choice activist Kate Smurthwaite argued in a debate regarding the ethics of abortion, since "being pregnant means that the whole of your body is being used to sustain an embryo," a woman forced to bear a child is being put in a position in which she must serve as "an incubator for a child she doesn't want." Smurthwaite articulated this better than I could've. To put that into perspective, I couldn't be swayed to donate my blood or organs against my will even if it meant that someone's life would be avoidably lost as a result. This right of mine is already protected by federal law, so why should this logic not apply to the debate surrounding abortion? Why should I allow for a baby I do not want to grow inside of me for nine months, for the encroachment of my liberty? If I am a college student in Mississippi working multiple jobs to fund my tuition so I can earn a degree and be one step closer to financial stability, and one night I am raped and impregnated at a party, why should that bill preclude me from exercising the constitutional right to an abortion granted to me by the Due Process Clause? 

As though giving more importance to the life of an undeveloped fetus than that of a fully grown woman is not inherently problematic enough, by giving a fetus the status of a person, you are also bestowing upon it certain civil rights. If a miscarriage occurs, should the mother be held criminally liable and convicted for first-degree murder? That sounds ridiculous, of course, but legal consideration of a fetus as a person would have such repercussions. 

As it is, abortions have become increasingly difficult to access for women across the US. Mississippi, where the aforementioned bill was passed, only has one abortion clinic. In Wyoming, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota, abortion clinics are similarly inaccessible. In 2014, 90% of US counties lacked an abortion-providing facility, and in 2008, one-third of patients obtaining abortions needed to travel more than twenty-five miles. Abortion rates have been declining steadily since the procedure was first legalized in 1973 with the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, even though roughly the same amounts of women have been seeking an abortion. "Twenty-five states have enacted Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers — or TRAP  — laws imposing strict requirements on abortion clinics and providers that the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group, says 'go beyond what is necessary to ensure patients' safety.' Reproductive rights activists also call them 'clinic shutdown laws,' because they say the laws are often written with the intent of closing abortion clinics in the state," write Rebecca Harrington and Skye Gould of Business Insider. A case surrounding one of these TRAP laws made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the law "provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an 'undue burden' on their constitutional right to do so." But laws of this sort still exist across the US, and as a result, women may attempt performing an abortion on their own. An economist found that Google searches for "self-induced abortions" have spiked, and the World Health Organization reports that this can lead to maternal complications and death.

The solution here is clear: redirect the energy spent passing legislation that infringes upon women's reproductive rights toward passing legislation that facilitates the establishment of abortion clinics where women need them most. We should be focusing on augmenting the accessibility of safe, legal abortions in registered facilities instead of precluding women from terminating pregnancies when the Supreme Court ruled abortion constitutional 45 years ago in 1973.